Remote sensing is getting the nod for many crop tech applications. High on USDA’s wish list is to use the technology to track what tillage gets done and where.
Keeping track of tillage trends is important because the data can be used to determine the environmental impact of conservation tillage and to target conservation programs. It influences the direction of research and outreach efforts, and it helps machinery and pest control companies decide what products to offer.
The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) recently came a step closer by successfully creating and evaluating conservation tillage maps, using Landsat TM 5 imagery.
Scientists at ARS’s Southeast Agricultural Research Service Watershed Research Unit, at Tifton, Ga., used satellite imagery to collect conservation and conventional tillage data over a 230,000-acre area. They confirmed the images’ accuracy by ground-truthing 61 conservation-tillage and 77 conventional-tillage sites.
In the short term, the data will provide a foundation to evaluate the impact of conservation tillage on erosion and water quality in the watershed. In the long term, it’s a step toward remote sensing of national tillage trends.
Currently, there is no national program to track tillage trends. From 1982 through 2004, the nonprofit Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC) coordinated an annual or bi-annual transect survey in every county with more than 100,000 acres of cropland. Data was collected by driving prescribed routes through each county, physically examining fields. The national survey ended when USDA stopped requiring employees of the Natural Resources Conservation Service to help collect data, citing insufficient manpower.
Ultimately, CTIC executive director Karen Scanlon thinks tillage will be tracked using a combination of remote sensing and transect surveys. “There probably always will be a need for on-the-ground observers,” she says.
In 2007, volunteers in 400 counties around the U.S. conducted transect surveys and shared the data with CTIC. The organization disseminated the data and will help the volunteers track tillage trends in their counties.
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